<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<meta charset="UTF-8">
<title>triumph by mustardleaf</title>
<style type="text/css">

body { background-color: #ffffff; }
.CI {
text-align:center;
margin-top:0px;
margin-bottom:0px;
padding:0px;
}
.center   {text-align: center;}
.cover    {text-align: center;}
.full     {width: 100%; }
.quarter  {width: 25%; }
.smcap    {font-variant: small-caps;}
.u        {text-decoration: underline;}
.bold     {font-weight: bold;}
</style>
</head>
<body>
<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/27928657">triumph</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/mustardleaf/pseuds/mustardleaf'>mustardleaf</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Haikyuu!!</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Gen, Haikyuu!! Manga Spoilers, Introspection, Pro Volleyball Player Oikawa Tooru, oikawa deserves the world, writing this hurt but felt so good</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-12-07</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-12-07</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-10 21:07:46</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>401</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/27928657</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/mustardleaf/pseuds/mustardleaf</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>[Manga spoilers]</p>
<p>Team Argentina wins the Olympic gold. Oikawa reflects.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>19</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>triumph</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>As soon as I found out that Oikawa canonically wins the Tokyo Olympics, I just started <em>hurting</em> thinking about where he started and where he is now...</p>
<p>Furudate really got me crying over 2D men and not sparing 3D men a second glance. An absolute legend.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <em>[Team Argentina has just won the Olympic gold. Oikawa reflects.]</em>
</p>
<p>Those suffocating, crushing bouts of bone-deep helplessness, homesickness, and loneliness he felt during his first few years in a completely unfamiliar country. Those moments he felt so lost, scrambling - desperately grasping for slivers of familiarity, the overwhelming desire to feel safe and comfortable and wanted, to be back home in Miyagi. The faces of his old teammates, the native language rolling effortlessly off his tongue - the comfort, the warmth, the ease. But nothing was ever easy for him. He himself knew that since too young of an age, constantly haunted by the presence of overwhelming talent, always eclipsed by someone greater. Every step forward was a grueling, painful struggle, driven by sheer desperation, desire, hunger, and…fear. </p>
<p>Fear?</p>
<p>Sometimes he thinks that fear was the reason why he was here - in Argentina, starting from ground zero. Why was he here? Was he running away? Away from Miyagi? Was he running from the fact that he <em>knew</em> he could not be the best back home? That maybe if he left everything behind and started somewhere new, he could move forward with more freedom, he could fail and get up as many times as he wanted - because he quite literally had nothing to lose. No family, no friends to see him fail - no one except for himself. </p>
<p>Maybe that was part of the reason. An ugly reason - but he supposes it didn’t matter now. Now, as he was stepping forward, gold medal gripped tightly in his sweat-slicked hand, his lungs still burning. This was real. He had worked bone, blood, and tooth for it. He was a plant that had uprooted himself from the familiarity of his home, forcefully burrowed into foreign soil, and stubbornly refused to wilt. Lifted himself to the sun each day, roots plunging mercilessly into the ground with a desperate sort of defiance.</p>
<p>Now with the familiar faces of his home country staring down at him, his feet solid on the winners podium, he finally, finally lets himself go. Eyes blazing, jaw tense with the gold medal clamped between his teeth, he screams to the world, <em>I'm here. I'm back. Look how strong I've become.</em> But the voice that is the loudest is in his own head, and he finally lets himself hear the words he had never once told himself. </p>
<p>
  <em>You did well, Tooru. I'm proud of you.</em>
</p>
  </div></div>
</body>
</html>